Barbara Lauwers Podoski, who launched one of the most successful psychological campaigns of World War II, which resulted in the surrender of more than 600 Czechoslovakian soldiers fighting for the Germans, died of cardiovascular disease Aug. 16 at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington, D.C. She was 95. One of the few female operatives in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor to the CIA, she found creative ways to undermine...

A determined historical sweep masks a small-minded bid for easy outrage and heartstrings-pulling in the schematic World War II drama "Walking With the Enemy. " Set in 1944, when the war was essentially over for the Nazis but their reign of terror in occupied territories was still going strong, the movie focuses on the efforts of a young, displaced Hungarian Jew named Elek (Jonas Armstrong) to find his family after escaping from a camp, which turned into a concerted effort to save many Hungarian Jews.

Michael Kuryla Jr., one of 317 sailors who survived the sinking of the ill-fated Navy cruiser Indianapolis during World War II and later bonded with other activists to exonerate their ship's captain, died of cancer Oct. 3 at his home in Bartlett, Ill. He was 84. Kuryla found strength from his fellow stranded Navy comrades floating in shark-infested waters of the Philippine Sea for nearly five days in 1945. Their ship, the cruiser Indianapolis, sank in just 12 minutes after being hit by two Japanese torpedoes shortly after delivering the atomic bomb that would level Hiroshima.

An alternately delicate and brutal retelling of the memoir by former World War II British Army officer Eric Lomax, "The Railway Man" is an impressively crafted, skillfully acted, highly absorbing journey into a dark corner of world history. Colin Firth plays Lomax in 1980, more than 35 years after being tortured at a Japanese labor camp in Thailand. He learns that Takashi Nagase, the Japanese interpreter at the helm of that cruel, unforgettable punishment, is still alive. Lomax will eventually cross continents to confront his erstwhile captor and hopefully quell the post-traumatic stress disorder that has plagued the self-dubbed "railway enthusiast" for decades.

Bill Geary, 88, a cattle rancher from Montana, paused Saturday to look at pictures and maps detailing the carnage of the World War II battle on the island of Peleliu. Geary, who fought there as a Marine, was succinct in his assessment. "It was a nasty place," he said as he walked a passageway dubbed the Hall of Heroes aboard the amphibious assault ship named for the battle. What was nasty about it? Geary was asked. "Everything," he said, "absolutely everything." It was a morning of remembrances for Geary and 10 other Marine veterans honored in San Diego as members of the 12th Defense Battalion, a unit of the 1st Marine Division, the division that led the U.S. assault on the Japanese garrison.

A plaque near the entrance on the sprawling grounds of the Santa Anita racetrack is the sole reminder of the track's place in World War II history as the nation's largest assembly center for Japanese Americans on their way to internment camps. Although the prestigious Breeders' Cup World Championships unfolded Friday and Saturday at the landmark racetrack, 67 years ago a darker chapter unfolded at the site. The horses were moved out, the track was shut down and the park's extensive grounds provided the massive space needed by the War Department to temporarily house thousands of people of Japanese decent.

Regarding "Remembering the Heartache of Terminal Island," July 28: Italian alien fishermen also had to leave Terminal Island, as well as Japanese nationals (alien enemies) and their dual-citizen Japanese American children. It's easy enough to raise $200,000 for a propaganda museum, when every person of Japanese descent (alien or American-born dual-citizen Japanese), received $20,000 each for "human suffering." Now they must try to justify the unjustifiable by continuing to pervert history, falsify events and revise WWII history.

While Christopher Knight's commentary on the proposed World War II memorial being placed on the site of the present Rainbow Pool exposes some of the politics that may have played into the site selection process (what a shocker), his article has more invective and hyperbole than rational thought on why it's a bad location for the memorial ("Damage to a Prime Piece of Real Estate," July 19). Anyone who has walked the length of the National Mall between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial knows what a lonely, empty space of land it is. The proposed WWII memorial is aesthetically well-suited to the location and vice versa, and is in keeping with the existing Washington architecture (unlike the Vietnam War Memorial, which nonetheless has become a cultural touchstone cherished by the public and art critics alike)

Former enemies and allies somberly marked the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II on Tuesday, underlining the need to remember the bloodiest conflict of the 20th century so as not to repeat it. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose country sided with Nazi Germany during the initial invasion of Poland in 1939 before later opposing Germany, said the war and its causes needed to be studied from all perspectives. "We should examine everything which ended up bringing about the tragedy of Sept.

Commemorative wreaths will be placed Saturday to honor members of the Netherlands armed forces and Dutch civilians who died during World War II in the Netherlands East Indies. They will be placed at the base of the American flag at Los Angeles National Cemetery, Sepulveda Boulevard at Constitution Avenue in Westwood. The event, sponsored by the Comite 15 Augustus 1945, will be at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. For further information, call (310) 398-5837.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned Tuesday that the crisis over Ukraine was releasing the kind of “nationalistic fervor” that led Europe to World War II. Condemning Russia's moves toward annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine, Kerry said he saw a “nationalist fervor which could, in fact, infect in ways that could be very, very dangerous. All you have to do is go back and read in history of the lead up to World War II, and the passions that were released with that kind of nationalistic fervor.” Kerry, speaking to college students at the State Department, stopped short of directly accusing either side in Ukraine of acting like the Axis powers before World War II. But he said Russia's desire to take control of Crimea did not justify an annexation that, in his view, violated international law. It “doesn't legitimize just taking what you want because you want it or because you're angry about the end of the Cold War or the end of the Soviet Union or whatever it is,” Kerry said.

Leo Bretholz, a Holocaust survivor who became a major voice in the campaign to gain reparations from companies that transported victims to concentration camps during World War II, died in his sleep Saturday at his home in Pikesville, Md. He was 93. Bretholz played a leading role in a campaign to require SNCF, the French railway system that historians have said conveyed 76,000 people to Nazi camps, to pay reparations to U.S. Holocaust survivors....

William Guarnere didn't have to go to war. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, he was building tanks at the old Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, a job considered crucial to the war effort and good for an exemption from military service. But Guarnere didn't take it. He enlisted in the Army paratroops on Aug. 31, 1942, and went to battle. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article incorrectly included William Guarnere's late wife, the former Frances Peca, in a list of surviving family members.

Though it comes to Los Angeles as a two-part film, "Generation War" began its life as a three-part German TV series (originally called "Our Mothers, Our Fathers") that was a sensation in its home country. Eight years in the making, 4 hours, 39 minutes long (and needing two separate admissions during its weeklong run at Landmark's Nuart), "Generation War" attracted millions of viewers on German TV. Its story will be familiar and unfamiliar to American viewers, which is why it holds our interest even when it is not at its best.

When plans for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin were announced years ago, German writer Martin Walser wondered how many monuments to shame his country would have to build. It was a telling sentiment for a nation that could not cleanse the past yet wanted its young freed from the stain of their Nazi ancestors. The ruin of World War II - bones of the fallen are still occasionally dug up in forests outside Berlin - led to decades of national silence, anger, reparation and collective guilt.

Propaganda today has a nasty connotation; it suggests something cheesy, manipulative, in the service of a dishonorable cause. During World War II, however, cinematic propaganda became an elevated art, practiced with unusual expertise by five great American movie directors: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra and George Stevens. Hitler threw down the gauntlet with Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" (1935), propaganda so captivating that it impelled even gentle Germans to thump their chests.

If Miramax was the house that Quentin Tarantino built, is Weinstein Co. the house that Tarantino will save? That answer may become clearer next weekend when the director's 153-minute, campy World War II action movie "Inglourious Basterds," starring Brad Pitt, opens. A lot more than the fate of the free world is riding on whether Tarantino's renegade soldiers succeed in their mission to kill Hitler. A hit could give Bob and Harvey Weinstein some much needed breathing room and perhaps quiet -- at least temporarily -- speculation that their production company is on the ropes.

Maria Gulovich Liu, who as a young schoolteacher in Slovakia during World War II joined the underground resistance as a courier and later helped a small group of American and British intelligence agents evade the German Army as they fled through the frigid mountains to safety, has died. She was 87. Liu, who received a Bronze Star for her "heroic and meritorious" service to the Office of Strategic Services, died of colon cancer Friday at her home in Port Hueneme, said Jim Downs, a family friend.

The little-known tale of the men and woman who saved priceless artworks during World War II comes to the big screen when the film "The Monuments Men" opens on Friday. George Clooney, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett tell the story of how experts saved priceless masterpieces from destruction -- a story that will be memorialized in a gallery planned at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. "This gallery will be a journey into the heart of the greatest treasure hunt in history," Robert Edsel , museum board of trustee member, said in a statement.

January 29, 2014 | By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

Fleming - Ian Fleming - has become the subject of a biographical miniseries, "Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond. " Commencing Wednesday on BBC America, it mainly concerns the wartime adventures of the future creator of James Bond when he worked for British Naval Intelligence, dreamed of deeds of derring-do and carried on in London, smoking, drinking, gambling and sleeping with women, anticipating the manner of his future fictional alter ego. ...